Magnitude of Students’ Attitude towards Vocational Education in Selected Secondary Schools in Tanzania

This study aimed at examining students’ attitude towards vocational education in Ilemela Municipality in Mwanza region to inform on magnitude of negative attitude towards Vocational education in Tanzania. Researchers examined the magnitude of form four students’ emotional, beliefs and behavioral attitudes toward vocational education. This paper presents results from 355 student respondents randomly selected from eleven selected secondary schools in Ilemela municipality. The study adopted cross-sectional survey design in which self-administered questionnaires were used to collect data. Data were analyzed through descriptive technique, and presented in form of tables of frequencies and percentages. Overall results reveal that most of respondents had positive attitudes toward vocational education. The average percentage score of attitudes towards vocational education considering three attitude dimensions was 91.35, 8.35, and 0.28 in the positive, neutral, and negative categories, respectively. Despite most of respondents having a positive attitude towards vocational education, a few, 42.2 percent indicated interest to study vocational subjects. This implies that most of respondents have perceived value of vocational education, but they are not willing undergo training in vocational education related skills. This contradiction is assumed to be associated with the influence from extraordinary difference in terms of ‘importance’ and ‘respect’ laid between blue-collar jobs and white-collar jobs. In reference to this, blue-collar jobs attract importance in some key aspects relating to employment, but attract less respect from society. Despite robust international evidence on attitude towards VET, there is a dearth of studies in Tanzania examining students’ attitude towards vocational education in particular form four students (grade twelve students). The study indicates that students have positive emotional and beliefs attitudes, but have negative behavioral attitude towards vocational education. This means the student respondents are not likely to join vocational education institution after their secondary education. In this respect, the study recommends teachers and other education stakeholder to promote all forms of attitudes to secondary school students as far as vocational education is concerned. Keywords:Students, Emotional attitude, Beliefs attitude, Behavioral attitude, Vocational education, Secondary schools. DOI: 10.7176/JEP/14-33-06 Publication date: November 30th 202